Nature Photography & Alvin and the Chipmunks

My little one, Alivia, has taken a liking to Alvin and the Chipmunks!  She is obsessed with their movies (they have 3 out)!  After she went to bed last night, and while I should have been drafting Wednesday’s post, I was entranced with Alvin and the Chipmunks the Squeakquel.  Just when I thought I was the only one, I looked over at the hubby to find him laughing his butt off when, yeah, he should have been doing something else as well (homework)!  It was a nice and much needed break for the both of us! 

Free set of Number Flash Cards!

Does your tot know his/her numbers yet?  I know when my little one was learning her numbers that she responded very well to flash cards.  Very well is putting it mildly too.  She used to walk around everywhere with them asking me over and over again "What's this mama"?  I loved her enthusiasm for wanting to learn.  Of course Eric Carle and Dr. Seuss helped tremendously.  Their flash cards were by far the cutest I have ever seen! 

Wordless, who me?

Not completely wordless, but close. 

Looking over at my little one makes me think of how great it is to be a kid.  When all it takes are little things like a pink hat or animal print sneakers to make you smile, to make you happy, to make you love life!  There is no confusion, fuss, chaos, stress, worry, responsibility.  Just SIMPLICITY!  I wish it could always be like this for her. 

Blogging resources, tools, widgets, html etc. you should check out!

If you can believe it, this post has been sitting in my drafts folder for at least a month.  It’s a good thing I checked it!  I’d hate to deprive you all of the adorableness!  I love these pictures of Livi in her room.  I took them the same day I photographed her BIG girl bed.  If you missed this post, feel free to check it out!

5 Free customizable photo bookmark for print!

Have you, by chance, seen my post on 4 customizable photo bookmarks?  If you liked it, than you are in for a treat.  I created another FREE set of 5 customizable photo bookmarks to print in five assorted colors.  The template is an 8.5 x 11 inch .psd file that can be opened in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.  The template is super easy.  Once opened, all you have to do is click on the layer that reads ‘PLACE PHOTO HERE’ (highlighted in red) and go to FILE / PLACE to insert an image from your computer files.  Lastly, you would resize your image to fit the frame I created.  That’s it, you’re done! 

Welcome to Like Me on Facebook Wednesday!

Welcome to Like Me on Facebook

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4 free grunge frames for PS and PSE!

I have a little something different for you today!  I designed some new  frames in Photoshop!  Unfortunately I didn’t have any new pictures to use for my examples, but I wanted you to see them in use.  They are .psd files that can be opened in PS or PSE and are 850 px wide.  Once you open the file in your software, all you have to do is click on the ‘PLACE PHOTO HERE’ layer and go to File / Place to insert the image of your choice from your computer!  Hope you like them and if you are interested in some other goodies, be sure to stop by my Freebies page!

 

Tone your images in Photoshop! (a video tutorial)

I don’t know how you prefer your images, but I usually like mine to have a lot of contrast.  I’m not talking about so much that the whites and blacks in the image have lost their detail, but I do like to make the shadows and highlights really pop!

Then there are times that I just want to tone everything down.  Do you ever feel that way?  It was taking me awhile to figure out why I wasn’t completely happy with the processing of an image but then it was like a light bulb went on over my head and I was certain of the look I was going for!  I know toning can mean a different things when it comes to photography so the type of toning I am speaking of is when the overall colors/shadows/highlights of the image blend together to create a smoother appearance.  I guess the opposite of the toning I am speaking of would be less contrast. 

Wordless Wednesday (sort of)

A wordless Wednesday in Instagrams!  Image descriptions don’t count as words do they?

From left to right:
1st row – Livi sleeping on Daddy (and hiding from Mommy).  She didn’t want her picture taken anymore. / Livi with Nana playing with her toy cupcakes (but she calls them muffins). / Someone bought these beautiful flowers for my sister.
2nd row – My beautiful mommy. / My nephew’s birthday cake. / A lighting fixture I happen to love! (Yes, random, I know).
3rd row – My girl Carrie from Sex & the City (did it really need explaining)? / Hungry hungry hippo. / Patching Livi’s eye before bedtime.

Free collage template (9 photos)!

This is going to be a less words on Wednesday for me!  I’m resorting to my Instagram shots; haven’t been able to pick up my camera in a few days.  If you like the collage below, feel free to grab it HERE!  It’s a .psd Photoshop file 850 px wide.  As a reminder, you just click on the layer named “PLACE PHOTO HERE”, that I highlighted in red, and go to FILE / PLACE to choose the image you’d like to insert in the square.  My template does not include the text.

The Big E Fair!

Sorry I haven’t been posting as much!  There have been BIG things happening over here!  Hopefully I can share some of them with you after the dust settles a little!

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a few pictures.  The hubby and I took Alivia to the fair this past weekend!  Despite the horrific stand still traffic, 3 1/2 hour car ride, crowded fair grounds, and cranky over tired children (Alivia and her friend Mackenzie), we had a good time!  It’s amazing how expensive one day out can be!  They really soak you at these fairs.  Between admission tickets, carnival ride tickets, parking, food, etc., we have barely anything left in our pockets!  The poor hubby’s going to have to do an overtime just to make up for the money we spent!  No, I’m just kiddin’ sort of.

Let’s try this again shall we?

Guess what?  I’ll be having a guest blogger posting this Friday from Two Shades of Lovely and I’m so excited!  She’s going to be sharing some great links with you!  If you don’t already know Jeni, I’d recommend hopping over to her site!  Take a load off and have a look around!  Oh, and in case you have been following my The Missing Link posts (on Fridays), I’ll be posting Week 22 over at Two Shades of Lovely so I hope to see you there!

Are you using actions?

Since I got a new laptop I also made the switch from Photoshop Elements (PSE) to Photoshop CS6 (PS).  I was a little hesitant to make the transition because 1) Photoshop was very expensive and 2) I’d grown to love some actions that I had purchased strictly for PSE.  Actions that I hadn’t yet learned how to create manually.  I recently repurchased them on Paint the Moon and am so happy I did.  They work so much better in PS (or I think so anyway).  Not to mention the action selection has changed since I last purchased them and the bundles included actions like remove color cast and remove the wonky colors (love that word “wonky”)!  Today, I thought I’d share some before and after images.  I like to do this every now and then as I know it can be useful (or fun at the very least) to see how others are editing their images. 

Free Financial Templates… Can I afford this & how much money will I have left over?

I’ve been thinking of doing a post on finances for a long time now but never had a spare minute to create the spreadsheet templates that I wanted to attach along with it!  I woke up early this morning to work on them and just finished typing my last number.  I feel confident enough to speak on the subject of finances since I’ve always been great with money!  It started when I was a little girl and would steal the coins from my dad’s end table in my parent’s bedroom.  Yeah, I was a little thief, but soon those coins would add up to $10, $40, and then to hundreds that I would stash under my mattress!  Even when I found something I really wanted to buy, I almost always found a way to talk myself out of it.  No doll, clothing, board game, etc. would satisfy me the way watching my money grow did!  Soon I would have enough to open my first bank account and so that’s what I did with the help of my mother of course!  I never felt more grown up than I did on the day we opened that bank account.

Alivia’s Birthday – Part 1

We’ll call this post Part 1 since my laptop apparently can’t handle editing RAW files.  I’m hoping to be able to process the rest of my sister’s pictures when I get my new Macbook Pro in a couple weeks! 

So these pictures, like I mentioned in Monday’s post, were taken by my sister so don’t fall off your seat or anything but, yeah, I’m actually in them!  I was having such a great time processing these pictures until my computer would randomly shut down when I opened a RAW file.  It was ridiculous!  You can imagine how long it took me just to process these ones that I’ve attached here. 

Truly wordless; imagine that!

Child Photography (Are you editing faces)?

I have a question?  How do you edit your photographs of children?  Do you touch up faces?  If so, how much?  Sometimes I edit without thinking.  In this case, I had edited a picture of a child where I removed all blemishes from their face.  To me, a blemish is equivalent to food crumbs, dirt, bruises or cuts/scrapes which I’d also remove assuming it didn’t fit into the picture.  In other words, if I caught a picture of a child eating birthday cake and then removed all evidence of food from their mouth, it wouldn’t be quite as interesting.  Another example would be if I caught a picture of child crying who fell down and was lifting their pant leg up to see their boo boo but then I removed all evidence of the cut/scrape, it wouldn’t really make any sense now would it?  It’s like I’m removing half the story.  In this particular case, however, this child was posing for me.  It was a close-up of their face with no real story behind it other than “I’m so freakin’ cute with my BIG brown eyes”!  Blemishes in this case were distracting.   It takes someone like my husband to say “do you think the parents would be offended” to make me stop, think, and realize, “I’m yeah, they might find it insulting”! Crap! What to do, what to do?

Google Tutorial & Back to School Printable!

Sometimes I take for granted the small resources that I use to make my blogging easier.  It’s only when I get a question from a reader that reminds me I really should share my resources.  So a BIG thank you to Natalie over at Growing up a NJ Wife & Mom for asking how I loaded a .psd file into a Google document.  I already replied to Natalie’s inquiry but thought I’d share with all of you incase you were curious also.

Happy 4th… (freebie holiday collage)!

Hey there!  I have something special for you guys today!  I created a 4th of July collage!  For my sample, I took pictures of Aliva’s 4th of July dress which, I thought, went perfectly with this collage.  I hope to get some tomorrow of her actually in it!  I’m sure these will be a lot more interesting.  Although, I’m not quite sure the dress is going to fit her.  I’m thinking it’s a bit too small!  It’s a good thing I kept the tag on and have the receipt.  Something tells me we may be taking this back!  I hope not though!  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.  I really should have tried the dress on her today.  You think I would have thought of that sooner when I had the darn thing out and she was actually awake (she’s in bed now).  My brain is mush today and it’s only Wednesday.  I’ve been extra busy over here trying to clean the house and prepare for a vacation that we are taking in 3 days!  Woo hoo!  Yeah, I’m a nut.  I start preparing for a vacation a week in advance.  I admit it!  I just hate to forget anything.

New Grungy Collage

Hey there!  Yeah, I’m a little late posting for Tuesday.  You’ll have to forgive me, I went to bed super early last night (which is when I would have been drafting my Tuesday post) because I wasn’t feeling well.  I’ve been feeling super run down and almost like I’m fighting what could be a pretty serious cold.  Either that or I have allergies.  Not sure.  I didn’t give myself the ol’ booger test.  You know what I’m talking about right?  You blow your nose and if your boogies are green it’s a cold but if they are clear than it’s allergies.  It comes in handy when the little ankle biter gets sick.  It’s nice to be certain what she has so that I can treat it correctly.  Anyhoo, so last night when the hubby came home from work (at round 7:15 pm), I took advantage and ran myself a nice hot bath and then climbed right into bed afterwards at around 8:00 pm.  I don’t think I’ve been to bed at 8 o’clock since I started this blog seeing as my nights are really the only time I have to myself.  Anyhow, it was nice.  Today, I am feeling a tiny bit better, but still not myself.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t come down with anything.  I’m already envisioning Alivia and I sick for the weekend.